For the past several months, but most notably in the past two weeks or so, my friends list on LJ has been populated mostly by posts that begin with things like...

"So I'm going to post to LiveJournal, even though nobody uses it any more..."

"Oh wow, I still have my LiveJournal login! Does anyone still post here?"

"I sure miss LiveJournal. I wish people posted here..."

Well, in the words of the psychiatrist from Local Hero, "I'm still here, Happer!"

For a long time, I made a point of responding to these posts in a cheery "I'm still here! I still read! Keep posting!" But honestly I'm starting to get a little peeved about it now. Like newspaper articles about the death of print or songs about how the heart of rock and roll is still beating, these posts are quickly moving from the occasional wistful sigh to a particularly formulaic and tiresome genre all to themselves.

It's true that LiveJournal isn't the New Shiny Social Media Platform. Any platform older than six months is officially not the New Shiny Social Media Platform. Twitter is ten years old, and people have been saying "Twitter is dead!" for nine years. Tumblr was where all the cool kids hung out for about fifteen minutes, but even that was considered passé once one of its users noticed somebody over 20 had an account. And yet, somehow, there's more happening on my Tumblr feed than I can possibly keep up with, so I end up scrolling past most of it like flipping past 250 channels of cable TV and there's still nothing on.

Despite its 1998-tastic clunky interface, it's still among the best platforms for long-form posts. So I say this to LiveJournal readers: IF YOU MISS LIVEJOURNAL, POST TO THE SILLY THING ALREADY. As they say, "If you post it [and tell people about it, important detail], they will come."

The thing about all internet content, is that it thrives on regular updates, and withers if you let it sit. This is as true of LiveJournal as it is of the Huffington Post. This is one reason why Facebook has its infuriating and seemingly-random interface, to make you feel like you're seeing something "new" every time you log on. LiveJournal just shows you the feed, in blessed sequential order and in paginated form, something precious few platforms do any more because it doesn't make for "good marketing."

In short, LiveJournal, by virtue of still being itself after all this time, has managed to stay in the form of what social media should be like, and frankly I intend to reward that by staying here and continuing to post here. If you like it, and all these "I miss this place..." posts sure make it sound like people do, then you should keep posting too.